Olmsted Falls council committee discusses why sewer bids came in over cost, how to proceed with project

OLMSTED FALLS, Ohio—After their original funding plan and timetable were upended by over-budget bids, Olmsted Falls city government has begun planning how to proceed with its "Phase Five" project, which will sewer about 300 homes.

June 17, Councilman Jay Linn presided over a meeting of the utilities committee with three of his elected colleagues and representatives from Chagrin Valley Engineering. The meeting occurred a week after bids for sewer construction came in over budget for the second time, prompting a quorum of council to reject the bids.

With this action, council effectively committed to forgoing a $2.5 million grant secured in 2009 from the Ohio Public Works Commission, which required the city to begin construction by the end of June 2014.

However, the city still may receive funding from OPWC. City officials have said that they are seeking an arrangement by which the commission would pay for half the project's engineering costs, which are estimated to be around $500,000.

Donald Sheehy of Chagrin Valley Engineering said that OPWC's apparent openness to contributing to paying for engineering suggested willingness to offer other support down the line. He said that investing in engineering is a sign that they want the project to be finished. Therefore, they might offer some form of additional support to see Phase Five through.

The next deadline for applications to OPWC grants is September 17. However, Linn said that there were residents who currently dealing with old storm sewers and failing septic tanks. Now that Phase Five is not going forward on its original schedule, those households are faced with choices about what to do with their waste systems.

Sheehy told councilmembers to advise residents not to do anything until the end of summer, when the city will hopefully have firmer plans in place. Homeowners who buy a septic system now might be faced with also having to build and tie into new sewers in a few months or years.

Chagrin Valley Engineering has worked with the city in 2014 to reduce the project's costs and manage the bidding process. Council President Kathleen Fenderbosch directed questions to Sheehy about why bids came in higher than anticipated.

Sheehy said that offers were less competitive than hoped for because of factors felt throughout the construction industry, including recent rises in material costs and a busy contracting season.

Sheehy also said that it had been difficult for this project to secure a "fill site" for depositing debris generated by digging and building. Earlier efforts in the project to arrange a fill site by a nearby overpass had failed. The costs associated with transporting debris to a more distant fill site upped bids' cost.

"Sometimes, contractors get a leg up on each other because they have a fill site, or know someone who needs filler," Sheehy said, indicating that this was not the case with any firm bidding on Phase Five.

Sheehy suggested that were the area involved in the project to receive new sewers, it would still have many old or problematic pieces of infrastructure. These include narrow streets, old pavement, and aging water and storm systems. He suggested expanding the scope of sewer construction to address these problems.

"To do it right, it's got to be bigger," Sheehy said.

Sheehy said that with all the additional improvements to the streets, the project could ultimately cost between $8 million and $10 million. However, he said that this figure was only a very rough estimate based on his experience with similar projects in recent years.

Furthermore, entities outside Olmsted Falls might pay a portion of the total cost, Sheehy said. As one example, he discussed a Cleveland Division of Water program which pays for the installation of water lines and half the costs of pavement disrupted by construction.

Fenderbosch said that during her time on council, the city had rejected participation in this program. She said that she wanted to review minutes from relevant meetings to review exactly why council acted as it did. However, Fenderbosch said that she was confident the primary reason was fear that "poaching" clauses in the agreement might have prevented Cleveland businesses from relocating to Olmsted's Joint Economic Development District. At the time, council had hoped the city could collect income tax from JEDD businesses.

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